In the Midst of Life

In the Midst of Life

By Ambrose Bierce.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Preface to the First Edition
4. In the Midst of Life
   1. Soldiers
      1. A Horseman in the Sky
         1. I
         2. II
         3. III
         4. IV
      2. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
         1. I
         2. II
         3. III
      3. Chickamauga
      4. A Son of the Gods
      5. One of the Missing
      6. Killed at Resaca
      7. The Affair at Coulters Notch
      8. The Coup de Grâce
      9. Parker Adderson, Philosopher
      10. An Affair of Outposts
          1. I: Concerning the Wish to Be Dead
          2. II: How to Say What Is Worth Hearing
          3. III: The Fighting of One Whose Heart Was Not in the Quarrel
          4. IV: The Great Honor the Great
      11. The Story of a Conscience
          1. I
          2. II
          3. III
          4. IV
      12. One Kind of Officer
          1. I: Of the Uses of Civility
          2. II: Under What Circumstances Men Do Not Wish to Be Shot
          3. III: How to Play the Cannon Without Notes
          4. IV: To Introduce General Masterson
          5. V: How Sounds Can Fight Shadows
          6. VI: Why, Being Affronted by A, It Is Not Best to Affront B
      13. One Officer, One Man
      14. George Thurston
      15. The Mockingbird
   2. Civilians
      1. The Man Out of the Nose
      2. An Adventure at Brownville
      3. The Famous Gilson Bequest
      4. The Applicant
      5. A Watcher by the Dead
         1. I
         2. II
         3. III
         4. IV
      6. The Man and the Snake
         1. I
         2. II
         3. III
         4. IV
      7. A Holy Terror
         1. I
         2. II
         3. III
         4. IV
         5. V
      8. The Suitable Surroundings
         1. The Night
         2. The Day Before
         3. The Day After
      9. The Boarded Window
      10. A Lady from Redhorse
      11. The Eyes of the Panther
          1. I: One Does Not Always Marry When Insane
          2. II: A Room May Be Too Narrow for Three, Though One Is Outside
          3. III: The Theory of the Defense
          4. IV: An Appeal to the Conscience of God
5. Colophon
6. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Preface to the First Edition

Denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this book owes itself to Mr. E. L. G. Steele, merchant, of this city. In attesting Mr. Steele’s faith in his judgment and his friend, it will serve its author’s main and best ambition.

A. B.

San Francisco, Sept. 4, 1891.

In the Midst of Life

Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

Soldiers

A Horseman in the Sky

I

One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in a clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia. He lay at full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, death being the just and legal penalty of his crime.

The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road which after ascending southward a steep acclivity to that point turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one hundred yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a large flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him giddy to look.

The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley’s rim. This open ground looked hardly larger than an ordinary dooryard, but was really several acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the enclosing forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon which we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and through which the road had somehow made its climb to the summit. The configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from this